


the time is gone (the song is over)

by MomentsOfWeakness



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 02:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5725822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentsOfWeakness/pseuds/MomentsOfWeakness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchesters can't keep sacrificing the world for each other. Someone has to stop them.</p><p>(Originally posted on Tumblr after the season 10 finale.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the time is gone (the song is over)

**Author's Note:**

> So someone posted this on Tumblr back at the end of season 10:  
>  _I bet all the hunters are like_  
>  _Fucking Winchesters_  
>  _If they weren’t already hiding in bomb shelters because the Winchesters always fuck things up around this time of year_
> 
> And I took it and turned it into a big pile of angst and death. Oops. (Not season 11 compliant.)

\-----

The darkness is released and everyone just knows. They don’t need to be told. Who else could it be?

It starts in whispers. In drunken conversations in seedy bars. In a joke that’s laughed off, that’s hushed quickly. ‘Don’t say that too loud or they’ll kill you first’.

But there have been too many deaths. Too many good hunters gone because of them. Too many evils released into the world that cause so much destruction.

The other hunters, they’re tired. They’re so very tired of the Winchester’s shit. Of their selfishness. Of the lives they’re willing to spend to stay together.

So those jokes and whispers and drunk mumblings turn into maybe’s and could we’s and should we’s.

We’d need a lot of people, they say. It’s been tried before but it didn’t stick, someone remembers. Some of us would die, comes another whisper at the back of the bar. A lot of us would die.

But it’s been months since The Darkness was released. Months of fighting and cleaning up another god damn mess. Months of dead hunters and dead civilians and living breathing Winchesters.

They make a plan. Spring, they say. We can’t wait any longer. It always happens at the end of spring. What will they release next year? 

They start to gather. People have been tracking them. Watching. Waiting.

A few of them feel bad. Awful even. The Winchesters have helped them. They’ve helped so many people.

But they hurt so many too, come the voices, louder, angry, ready for this to just be over.

They catch up to them mid-April in a small town outside Tulsa. It’s getting hot already. The dusty Impala sits outside a run down hotel, and the hunters start to sweat.

They have to take them by surprise. A few hunters are quietly clearing out the civilians. No need for more death today. Just these two.

Someone gives the signal and the door is kicked in. All the exits are covered. There’s so many of them. It’s gotta be enough. It ends today.

The first three inside the door find Dean lounging on one bed, dirty boots on the sheets and a pearl handled gun sitting loaded next to him on the nightstand.

He sits up slowly as Sam walks out of the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. Sam looks confused. He glances to Dean, over to the three people in the doorway with their guns drawn.

Neither of them makes a move as the hunters start slowly filing in until the room is filled.

The room is nearly crackling with nervous energy. Some of the hunters have to steady their grip, one wipes the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand and tries not to throw up.

Sam’s shoulders square off and he takes a deep breath, chest heaving as he realizes what is happening. Dean catches the eye of a few friends. Some won’t even look at them, eyes lowered but guns ready.

They know these people. Maybe not all of them, maybe not on a personal level, but they’ve been hunting all their lives and they know who they are. What they stand for. Why they do what they do.

Dean stands up and the room tenses. They’re waiting. Waiting for the first move, for the Winchesters to fight back. But Dean leaves the gun behind, walks slowly and surely and meets Sam in the middle of the room.

They stand side by side. It’s not where they’ve always been, but it’s where they should be.

Dean casts one more look at the crowd in the room, the shining barrels ready and waiting. Sam just looks at his brother.

When Dean turns back to Sam, when their eyes meet and Dean offers that slow, gentle smile that was only ever for Sam they hear someone say ‘Both of them at once. It has to stick.’

The click click click of gun barrels cocking is at once deafening and much too quite.

'We know you tried to do good, boys’ one old hunter says. He had worked with their dad, worked with them. He was a good man, but tired. 'It’s just that the bad outweighs the good. And we gotta put an end to it.’

Dean’s smile fades but he doesn’t take his eyes off Sam. He nods, once, lets the old man know it’s okay. They get it, they really do.

It was time.

They hardly hear the boom of the guns before it’s over. Two bodies on the floor, blood soaking the brown carpet. Two broken men that had been broken for years and years.

'Finish it,’ the old man says, then he walks away, turns his back on what just happened; he never touches a gun again after that day.

Most of them leave then, content with a job well done. The last of them - a few that knew them, a few that just knew of them and what they had tried to do all their lives - gathered up everything in the hotel room and placed it all carefully in the Impala.

They scrub the room clean of anything supernatural, every weapon, every scrap of paper with a half written verse of Latin. They take the bodies last.

Dean they lay on the back seat, head turned to the front, one arm dangling down to the floor where Sam is carefully folded in, long legs tucked up inside. They rest together side by side, like they’re only sleeping.

The Impala is driven to the desert. There’s nothing but sand and dead trees in sight, no one to witness the blaze that burns and burns until all that’s left is the shell of the car. Twisted red metal, the cracked and scorched engine, and dust.

The hunters head out to the rusted old pickup that had followed the Impala out, but one of them lingers. They were good men, she knows. It wasn’t their fault they loved each other more than the world.

She glances inside the smoking husk of the car, and for a moment she thinks she sees something, a tiny glint of gold on the floor of the car, a talisman winking among Sam’s ashes.

But she blinks and it’s gone, just a trick of the dying light in the hot desert.

The others are shouting at her, wanting to get out before night falls, before the world turns dark on the people who killed the Winchester brothers.

She jogs over to the truck and climbs into the back, pulling the hood of her coat up to protect her from the dust as the truck peels away.

It’s over.


End file.
